The Y

I began working on it one day in November 2016: I was in heavy need of some cheering up and onwards, to say the least, as so many of us were. And my tears of dismay and disbelief felt from a different (creative/positive, once I began to reflect on the project) angle illuminated for me still further my enormous pride in my light-shining community and the wonderful work of its many fierce human rights warriors—many of whom I am privileged to call family, call friend.

That was the spark for this Mutiny2Unity project. And thanks to my team of the usual fabulosas, the wonderful Marie Tueje (cowriter), ATOM FELLOWS (video editor, without whom…!), and Dave Sharma (producer), as well as Tim Cunningham (who one day over coffee many months ago said, Hey, how about getting a bunch of our friends to film themselves dancing around to Deep Blue She and Dropbox over the footage, and that could be the video for it?): Here we are.

And that November day, I began to think: This ‘dance’ or dance itself could be a political statement, a coming together of all of we ‘Others’, the whole world over, uniting in the good fight. And the project grew. And grew. From there.

So as well as thanks to the 100+ participants from all over the world/diverse backgrounds, ages, vocations—artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, teachers, librarians, advocates, actors, farmer, doctor (activists all, mostly women of color)—who took part in this rising up. Onscreen. And off. These include:

MoniCa Singh (influencer/international philanthropist and president and founder of The Mahendra Singh Foundation to aid girls/women who, like her, are acid attack survivors/ have survived such kinds of trauma)

Mercedes Terrance (an Akwesasne Mohawk member of The Rolling Resistance)

Smriti Mundhra (filmmaker; Best Director with Sarita Khurana at the Tribeca Film Fest for their doc Suitable Girl!)

The Deep Blue She (#Mutiny2Unity) remix and video feature ANOUSHKA SHANKAR on sitar, JON FADDIS on trumpet, AMITA SWADHIN on Testimony (footage of her Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing Testimony in DC) and VALARIE KAUR on Night Watch Service (at the Metropolitan AME Church).

The video also features original art, much of it created/pasted for the project (The Pink Lady street art in Bombay, by Jas Charanjiva; Deep Blue She Mergrrrl and Mutiny Angry Ladies sculptures by Jaishri Abichandani; Lisa Cirenza’s Refugee Blues live digital painting, and more).

Included as well is world news footage, filmed by participants, specifically: the Women’s Marches in NYC, Washington, DC, London, and Standing Rock; Standing Rock Water Protectors; and NYC subway post-it protest that emerged immediately after election results. (And the above testimony from Amita and Night Watch Service from Valerie.)

The original song Deep Blue She (which was a #VogueEmpower playlist pick for Vogue India’s social awareness initiative for women) is from my booktrack album Bombay Spleen: songs based on my second novel Bombay Blues, which is the sequel to Born Confused.

This song–a female-POV modern-day take on “A Sailor Went to Sea”, catalyzed by and in memory of Nirbhaya–was written for all who gloriously inhabit the infinite in-between. Us.

My intention with it was to write a modern-day female/human empowerment-themed dance track, a kind of call to rise up: to love our daughters more. Raise our sons to lay down swords. Stand up for ourselves and each other. Love who we want to love. Be who we want to be. Make room for and celebrate each other.
And create safe spaces for that embrace. East, West: All the world round. All things—necessities–that feel increasingly urgent to counterbalance (and hopefully dissolve, transform) the opposing forces that seem to have flexed in many parts of the world.

In a way this is my birthday present to Dimple Lala (protagonist of both of my novels; considered to be the first South Asian American YA character, who turns 15 this year): a promise to keep celebrating The ‘Other’, fighting the good fight. On a personal level, it is also this promise to my two daughters, and is a birthday gift to my huge-hearted gentle-handed warrior parents (as was Born Confused, all those years ago).

Given all the insanity/hate crimes/racial tensions of late (and in some ways, always), it feels like a particularly vital and poignant time to celebrate all our ‘browns’ and ‘Others’. The wonderfully diverse skins we’re in.

The winds are changing. And now is not the time to give up, fellow dreamers/doers—but rather, gather our forces. Turn that heartbreak to heartmake. We Are Here. And You are You– and that’s muscle, mind, heart, soul…and a very strong, steady light in the darkness indeed, one not to be underestimated.

Dressed in a suit and tie!
*I was too afraid to tell them my story
21st century!
*I was too afraid to tell them my story

Blackout across the bay
Except where the pretty party people stay
Paying for their ship to come in
Bottom’s up to sunup at Lands End

Eye to the telescope
Marauders all around me grope
Yet my lover ain’t allowed to dive in
Antiparty posse turn you in:

You blew me.
Blue me.

All quiet on the eastern cun(try)
Bolo how the West was won if 3-
-77 say we won’t escape
‘Less you wedded, then by all means rape!**

Got no permit for a long stiff drink
How a girl supposed to think?
Bar bala bleach and barter her skin
Motherland, turn to friend!

And they don’t want our hurricane lamp on

Mumbadevi can you tell me
Why they how who can be?
This city still divided now
That Reclamation be?
Devadasi, make me crazy
Dowry, sati, serve tea
If you the goddess, why the girl
Not safe upon your streets?

And they don’t want our hurricane lamp on
Walk the plank; won’t keep the blindfold on!

A sailor went to sea!
To see what he could she!
And all that she could see see see
Was the bottom, the bottom!
(Her bottom, her bottom!)
He bought her, he pawed her!
(We caught him, we caught him!)

Hands on deck,
From this wreck,
Fortress we seizing!
We will rise
Still entwined
With who the frock we please!

M-U-T-I-N-Y!
Lookout for the enemy
Y-U-N-I M-T?
He’s sitting on top of me
Dressed in a suit and tie!
Morality police
21st century?
Puh-leeze!

M- (uh-oh)-N-E-Y
Pillaging oi-oi-oil!
Driving their SUVs
Down a village street…

World overboard!
Better love your daughters more!

*And so the mother in me asks: What if?
What if this darkness
Is not the darkness of the tomb
But the darkness of the womb?
The winds are changing!
The winds are changing!

U-N-I: U-N-I-T-E!

This song was catalyzed by Nirbhaya/the 2012 Delhi gang rape. Please note, to state what is hopefully the obvious, that this line is an unequivocally anti-rape/rape culture reference to and criticism of sections of India’s penal code which do not recognize marital rape as a crime. DEEP BLUE SHE is also Bombay Spleen’s most direct anti-377 track (Section 377, which criminalizes homosexuality in India, was declared unconstitutional in 2009…but reinstated in 2013) and stands by LGBTQ rights. Which are, of course, HUMAN rights

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Tanuja Desai Hidier

Tanuja Desai Hidier is an author/singer-songwriter born and raised in the USA and now based in London.

Tanuja’s bestselling and critically acclaimed first novel Born Confused gave voice to a new multicultural generation. Bombay Blues — its long-awaited and hotly anticipated follow-up — explores everything this generation faces today, with a heady mix of uncertainty and determination, despair and inspiration, haunting loss and revelatory love.